I am a biocultural medical and psychological anthropologist and human biologist, specializing in human development and health across the life course. My special areas of research interest are stress and child development, and ecological models of healthy aging. I have worked in the southeastern United States, in Tanzania, and in Nicaragua
Keywords
- Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Human Biology, Child Development, Human Development, Biocultural, Cross-cultural, Early Childhood Education, Tanzania, Southeastern United States, Childcare, Cultural models, Public health, Ecocultural, Family social ecology, Nicaragua
Research Interests
- Human development across the lifecourse
- Biocultural medical and psychological anthropology
- Human evolutionary biology
- Social epidemiology
- East Africa, Central America, USA
Jason DeCaro (PhD Emory, 2006) is a biocultural medical and psychological anthropologist and human biologist with interests in human developmental ecology, neuroanthropology, and biolinguistic synthesis. Dr. DeCaro studies the intersection of cultural models, everyday practices, and human physiology in the production of differential well-being across the life course, especially but not exclusively focusing on children.
Questions that motivate Dr. DeCaro include:
- How do the routines and practices of everyday life within key developmental contexts (e.g., families) interact with culture and social structure to shift disease risk?
- What are the mediators of stress in the daily lives of individuals?
- What determines individual and group differences in the response to common challenges, whether normative (like entry into a new school year), chronic (like persistent childhood adversity), or traumatic (like a natural or man-made disaster)?
Major current research projects concern pathways among food insecurity, nutritional status, social status and differential well-being in the United States, Central America and East Africa; everyday quality of life among older adults with osteoarthritis in the US; biolinguistic approaches to the study of relationships and emotion regulation; and psychobiological moderation of school adjustment in children.
DEHB is currently engaged in a variety of research projects examining differential developmental outcomes across the lifespan, with a special focus on how human biology is shaped by the social and cultural ecology of everyday life. Current active faculty-led projects include:
- Linking linguistic, relational, and physiological components of emotion regulation among intimate partners, in the service of better understanding correlations between relational and physical health, and as part of a larger project to lay the foundations for a biocultural-linguistic anthropology
- Identifying key addressable health challenges in rural Nicaragua among mothers and young children, through the deployment of a range of biomarkers for nutritional status, inflammation, stress, and parasite load
- Psychobiological moderation of the efficacy of a preventive intervention for preschool children at risk for the development of youth behavior problems
- Longitudinal associations among everyday experiences of older adults with osteoarthritis, patterns in physical activity, and symptom severity.
Subject Areas:
- Biocultural Medical Anthropology: life course health and development, global health, maternal/child health, social epidemiology, biocultural-linguistic approach, culture and health
- Human Biology: neuroanthropology
- Psychological Anthropology.
